With the advent of the communications era, one of the major markets for optical devices is portable electronics equipment, such as cellular telephones, pagers, two-way radios, data banks, computers and the like. Generally, it is desirable that the optical source devices in this type of equipment are compact, low power, inexpensive and include high quality optics with large angular magnification. To this end very small image generators are utilized which include a two-dimensional array of light emitting devices.
In one embodiment the two-dimensional array is formed on a semiconductor chip. For purposes of electrical connection, the semiconductor chip is mounted on a transparent substrate with the image being transmitted through the substrate. Also, in many organic electroluminescent diodes the diode is formed directly on a transparent substrate. In these structures optical magnifiers are utilized to produce a large enough image to be easily perceived. Such prior structures are disclosed in a copending U.S. patent application entitled "A Single Fold Optical Magnifier For Use in Image Manifestation Apparatus", with Ser. No. 08/405,057, filed on Mar. 16, 1995 and assigned to the same assignee, which patent application is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
A problem with all of these structures is that the optical magnifiers are spaced from the generated image by at least the thickness of the transparent substrate. This spacing imposes limitations on the optical magnifiers.